Network protocols, such as Transmission Control Protocol (TCP) utilize a retransmission timer to ensure that data that has not been acknowledged by the receiver is retransmitted. For example, such a timer may be set to a default value or a value based upon a measured round trip time between the sender and the receiver. When the timer expires before receiving acknowledgement of a packet, the packet is retransmitted and the length of the timer may be increased. With greater and varied amounts of packet loss, e.g., with wireless network connections, delivery of data may be slowed by waiting for the expiration of a retransmission timer to retransmit lost packets.